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All Rise...

This animated drama inspired Appellate Judge Amanda DeWees to adopt a tribal name. From now on she will be known as Sleeps At Her Desk.

The Charge

You think the only people who are people Are people who look and
think like you. But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger You'll
learn things you never knew you never knew.

Opening Statement

It's easy to find fault with Pocahontas, Disney's animated film based
on the life and legend of the Native American chieftain's daughter who saved the
life of English explorer John Smith. The statuesque woman at the heart of
Disney's film is certainly older than the historical Pocahontas at the time that
she met Smith, and there's no historical evidence of a romance between them;
Pocahontas, after all, married the Englishman John Rolfe (a story line Disney
went on to cover in the ho-hum straight-to-video sequel Pocahontas: Journey
to a New World). There's even dispute among historians as to whether she
actually did save Smith's life. The film's depiction of the clash of cultures in
Jamestown also omits acts of violence on both sides that are described in
historical accounts. Many critics, white and American Indian alike, have
lambasted the film for its historical inaccuracies and the liberties it takes
with the source material (see, for example, the discussions and Wikipedia
articles linked in the sidebar).

Nevertheless, there is a great deal of good in Pocahontas as Disney
has rendered it. Wholly apart from its considerable artistic merits and
emotional power, it sends an impassioned message about overcoming prejudice and
learning to respect other cultures. To be fair, the makers of the film didn't
set out to make a historical document. As James Apaumut Fall, the Native
American actor who voiced the tribesman Kocoum, puts it (in the "Indian
Opinions" discussion linked in the sidebar), "Instead of trying to
tell the historical story of Pocahontas, it tells a story about respecting other
cultures and people who are 'different' from yourself." According to Fall,
"the bottom line…is that it delivers a good message for kids that I
think should come from our culture." What Disney has created is a fable,
and on that level it works—although, sadly, the earnest tone and emphasis
on the love story will probably make it less appealing to children.

Facts of the Case

In 1607, the Virginia Company sends a ship from England to America to stake a
claim on the New World and bring back the gold that's rumored to be abundant
there. Ambitious Governor Ratcliffe (Disney regular David Ogden Stiers) is the
nominal head of the expedition, but well-known explorer and adventurer John
Smith (Mel Gibson, Signs) is the natural
leader. The men are well armed and anticipate that they can easily fight off any
Indians that they encounter, but John Smith's first meeting with a native is not
at all what he expected when he finds himself face to face with the chieftain's
daughter, Pocahontas (Irene Bedard).

Free-spirited Pocahontas has resisted taking life seriously, even when her
father, Chief Powhatan (Russell Means, The Last of the Mohicans), tells
her that he wishes for her to marry stern Kocoum and take her place as a leader
of her people. As she and John Smith fall in love, however, she finds that her
life is going in a direction she never anticipated, especially as tensions
escalate between her village and the invaders. When John is sentenced to death
for a killing committed by one of his English companions, Pocahontas must try to
bring about peace before war breaks out between the English and her own
people.

The Evidence

In some ways Pocahontas is a natural extension of previous Disney
animated films like The Little
Mermaid and Beauty and the
Beast. There's a central female character who is restless and unwilling to
fall in with the future that is expected of her; she has a strong relationship
with her father; and she will meet a love interest from a different sphere. Yet
Pocahontas is a striking, and ambitious, departure from its predecessors.
In addition to depicting a real-life story instead of a fairy tale, it is
essentially a serious film, a romantic drama instead of a romantic comedy.
Instead of having magic per se, the story is endowed with a kind of mysticism,
depicting the Native American characters as being connected to the spirit world
(embodied, for example, in the Grandmother Willow character). The animal
sidekicks in Pocahontas, who add comic relief and parallel (or comment
upon) many of the major plot elements, don't speak, which adds to the more
serious tone—as does the death of a prominent secondary character.
Pocahontas even dispenses with the standard happy-ever-after ending.
Visually one can also see departures from its predecessors, in the angular style
and the more realistic proportions of most of the human characters. The risks
the film takes in departing from audience expectations may have had as much to
do with its relatively lukewarm reception as its fiddling with historical
fact.

Yet despite its iffy historical accuracy in some areas, it is actually
remarkably on-target in its depiction of the English settlers' attitudes toward
the New World. There were those who hoped for a chance at a better life, like
the young Englishman Thomas (Christian Bale, American Psycho); romantic adventurers
like Smith, who feel excitement at the prospect of the unknown and the
challenges it holds; and greedy opportunists like the exploitative Ratcliffe,
who simply sees the new land as something he can grab and convert into cash. The
musical number "Mine, Mine, Mine" does a fine job of presenting the
latter two attitudes—which echo those one actually finds in writings from
the era—into a compact form. The opening "Virginia Company"
number also shows us a broad spectrum of motivations; the ensemble of male
voices sings that "the New World is like heaven, and we'll all be rich and
free." In hindsight it's ironic that these men will seize their own freedom
at the expense of others', but the filmmakers are to be applauded for showing
that the English aren't essentially villainous, which would have been an easy
step to take.

I suspect that one of the reasons Pocahontas isn't ranked by most
viewers in the highest level of Disney films is that it's much more serious than
we've come to expect Disney's animated musicals to be. These are recognizably
human characters clashing violently in a nonmagical setting, and a character
actually dies onscreen. That's going to pull a lot of viewers up short. The
central romance is also an unusually adult one, colored by Pocahontas's guilt
about betraying her people and the unlikelihood that the lovers will have a
future together; in combination with the grave subject matter and greatly
understated use of humor, this makes Pocahontas a movie that is destined
to appeal more to adults than to children. In the musical tradition, this is
much less like Beauty and the Beast and much more like West Side Story in its depiction of
the violence spawned by prejudice (but without the weirdness of dancing street
gangs). It's a shame that kids may be too turned off by the romance and the
darker tone to appreciate the good points of the story, just as it's a shame
that the filmmakers didn't take the even more courageous step of eliminating the
comic sidekick characters altogether (although I'm fond of the mischievous
raccoon, Meeko) and making this a consistently mature film.

The emphasis on romance is even more visible in the extended version of the
film offered here along with the theatrical release. The extended version
features a newly restored ballad, "If I Never Knew You," a duet
between John Smith and Pocahontas on the eve of his execution, which is also
briefly reprised in new footage near the end of the film. (The melody will
already be familiar to viewers, since it's frequently worked into the score and
played in a pop version over the end credits in the theatrical release.) This is
a particularly beautiful and moving song, expressing just what Pocahontas and
Smith have gained from knowing each other at a time when they seem about to lose
each other irrevocably. I'm delighted to have it restored, but I can well
understand why kids watching this sequence in the test screening got restless;
it's exactly the kind of thing that young ones will find mushy. Likewise, I love
getting to hear Mel Gibson sing a ballad, but children may find it laughable
when the dashing hero begins to croon. As one of the speakers in the audio
commentary notes, there's "a cornball quality when you have a male figure
singing sincerely on screen." This poignant song, like the love story it
encapsulates, will probably appeal far more to adults (or adolescent girls) than
to children.

The songs and Oscar-winning score are in fact among the film's greatest
assets and contribute exponentially to its emotional impact. Pocahontas
features some of composer Alan Menken's most gorgeous and emotionally stirring
melodies, perfectly complemented by Steven Schwartz's deft and incisive lyrics.
Since this project was Menken's first Disney film without lyricist Howard Ashman
(who died while Aladdin was still being
completed), I found particularly interesting the featurette in which two weigh
in on collaborating for the first time and defining boundaries (since both men
are lyricist-composers but were hired for a specific job). The featurettes on
the music of the film are good as far as they go, but I would have liked to hear
more about the development of individual songs and melodies, especially since
the score and songs make use of distinct musical traditions and instruments to
create contrasting styles for the English and the Native Americans. However,
"If I Never Knew You" gets a featurette to itself, which discusses how
it ended up being cut from the film and then restored.

Audiovisual quality for this release is superb. The visual transfer in
particular stands out as a major improvement over the VHS release: This
digitally restored print is very clean, with purer color and no distracting
grain as was so evident in the VHS transfer. (I haven't seen the original Gold
Collection DVD version, but I understand that it too was riddled with grain and
was unsatisfying visually.) Since color and lighting effects are both used so
effectively in the film, it's particularly satisfying to see them rendered with
such fidelity. Both the dreamy blue-green palette of the earlier scenes and the
dramatic red-washed scenes of impending (and actual) violence gain in impact
from the fine transfer. Audio is pure, clean, and richly dispersed among
speakers to create a natural aural landscape, with the score and songs emerging
with purity and power. There's not as much bass or breadth to the aural
landscape of this film as to some live-action ones, but what's present comes
through without distortion.

In this two-disc release, the first disc contains the two different versions
of the film and a small assortment of extras, the best of which is the audio
commentary by producer James Pentecost and codirectors Eric Goldberg and Mike
Gabriel. This lively commentary has lots of interesting behind-the-scenes
information on historical authenticity, changes the film underwent during its
development, goofs, and even fun trivia tidbits like the fact that one of the
animators was fond of sneaking in joke images that the supervisors had to be
vigilant about removing. The commentary also illuminates the filmmakers'
intentions and casts light on some of the symbolism in the film. The other
extras on this disc are largely kids' fare: sing-along versions of "Colors
of the Wind" and "Just Around the Riverbend" (both in full-screen
and of reprehensible visual quality), the Vanessa Williams video for the
Oscar-winning "Colors of the Wind," a set-top game, and directions for
making two craft projects, a drum, and a dream catcher.

Disc Two contains the bulk of the extra materials. These are extras that
will appeal more to teens and grownups, and the menu design reflects this:
Instead of being loaded down with cute stuff to appeal to kids, the menus
feature bold, colorful backdrops of concept art and instrumental selections from
the musical score. (By the way, you'd better be fond of "Colors of the
Wind," because you'll be hearing that song a lot over the course of
all the special features.) A particularly thoughtful feature on the menus for
both discs is that the running time of a feature will display when you move the
icon to it.

The half-hour making-of featurette dating from around the time of the film's
release is included; it's hosted by Irene Bedard and offers a fairly satisfying
look at the film's origin and making. Viewers can get further glimpses of the
development process through the storyboard-to-film comparison and the production
progression demonstration, which shows a sequence going from storyboard stage to
rough animation through cleanup animation and final version. We also get to see
an early presentation reel, featuring concept art accompanied by a demo version
of "Colors of the Wind." Almost fifteen minutes' worth of deleted or
alternate scenes are present, including two complete deleted musical numbers and
other musical snippets; several feature optional audio commentaries. The
animation in most of these sequences is still in the storyboard stage, and some
clips feature temporary vocal tracks. About the only deleted material that's
close to the final stage appears in a "miscellaneous scenes" sequence
that largely focuses on the Wiggins character, who started out as being
considerably more like his snide and bloodthirsty master.

Character design gets covered in many specific sections on different
characters, some of which contain introductions from the animators and test
footage in addition to the art galleries. I always find this one of the most
fascinating parts of any animated film—seeing how the characters started
and how they metamorphosed until they became the version we know. John Pomeroy,
key animator for John Smith, discloses that he watched Errol Flynn movies to
determine how the character would move, and the swashbuckling influence of Flynn
is evident in much of the early art for Smith, which often depicts him in high
boots and mustache. Glen Keane, supervising animator for Pocahontas, appears in
a clip from a lecture in which he demonstrates the differences between
Pocahontas's design and that of Ariel, who represents the standard Anglo Disney
heroine. This is an entertaining clip, especially since Keane also allows us to
compare the one contemporary portrait of Pocahontas with his (flattering)
interpretation of her. Elsewhere in the character design features we learn what
a narrow escape we had from a character named Redfeather, who was deleted. I
shudder at the thought of a talking turkey adding comic relief to this film.

A generous gallery of background and concept art shows off the visual beauty
that characterizes the film; there are so many index pages, in fact, that some
category divisions might have been helpful. The publicity gallery features the
usual posters in addition to some more surprising advertising materials, my
favorite of which was the fashion layout, in which Pocahontas models fashions
designed by Anna Sui, Isaac Mizrahi, and other top designers. There's a short
feature about the Central Park premiere of the film, which is of slight
interest. Rounding out the proliferation of extras are two theatrical trailers,
a multi-language reel that lets us hear how "Colors of the Wind"
sounds in a multitude of foreign languages, the music featurettes I mentioned
earlier, and the original video for the pop version of "If I Never Knew
You," which I personally detest but which some viewers may welcome.

Especially for a non-Platinum Edition, this is a highly satisfying
assortment of extra materials; the only really blatant omission is any
retrospective discussing the film's mixed critical and audience reception, but
that's probably too negative for the folks at Disney.

The Rebuttal Witnesses

Even setting aside the sticky issue of historical inaccuracy, the film is
sometimes a bit heavy-handed in getting its message across, as in a sequence in
which Ratcliffe uses cannons to fell trees, combining technology, violence, and
depredation of natural resources in one credulity-straining swoop. And even a
character as in touch with her environment as Pocahontas shouldn't be able to
escape a mauling when she picks up and cuddles a bear cub in the presence of its
parent. Sequences like these may lead some viewers to feel that the film draws
its characters too much in black-and-white terms, presenting the white men as
irredeemable predators and the indigenous Americans as impossibly noble and
innocent.

Such an argument, however, overlooks the ways that the screenplay
complicates the characters, offering shades of grey on both sides. Not only John
Smith but the valet Wiggins (David Ogden Stiers) and young Thomas show different
sides of the invaders and prove that not all are inherently wicked or
intolerant. Thomas is a plucky but inexperienced lad who hopes to find in the
new world a chance to better himself and his family; the new world represents
for him a new start, a chance to transcend his low social and economic stratum.
On his part, it's not malice or arrogance but naïveté that leads him
to take Ratcliffe's lead and assume that he has the right to appropriate the
lands. Similarly, the Native American characters aren't all paragons of wisdom
and insight; Powhatan's refusal to listen to Pocahontas perpetuates the ill
feeling between his people and the English, and Kocoum's sexual
jealousy—and perhaps some racial intolerance as well—leads him to
attack John Smith when he sees him kissing Pocahontas. The powerful musical
number "Savages" is a sobering depiction of one fundamentally human
quality that both the opposing groups share: a tendency toward violence. After
all, Pocahontas is fighting against not one side but both when she pleads for
peace instead of war. "We didn't want to delineate anyone as all good, all
pure, all that," says producer Pentecost on the commentary, and the
decision makes for a more complex story than viewers may anticipate.

It's true that the film is overtly message driven, but that's a difficult
trap to escape. Similar films like West Side Story—and heck, even
Romeo and Juliet—have the same tendency. I wasn't bothered by this,
since I've become used to the didactic orientation of other Disney animated
films, but some viewers may find this an insurmountable drawback.

Closing Statement

Pocahontas goes to prove the old maxim that you can't please everyone,
and some viewers will find its romanticized approach to history impossible to
stomach. In addition, although it was made and marketed as a kids' film,
Pocahontas is probably too intense for some young viewers, and other
youngsters (especially boys) will be put off by the emphasis on romance.
However, older viewers may well find, as I have, that it's a stirring and
beautiful film that improves on further acquaintance. If you can set aside your
preconceptions and enjoy it on its own terms, you stand a good chance of
discovering that Pocahontas has many riches to offer.